Get rid of having to manually activate buffs!!

the_sniper

You know what really pisses me off about this thread? You see Devs responding in other threads about the combat upgrade but none respond in this thread. Glad to see you really care about our thoughts and input about the new system.

And just to be clear, having to manually activating buffs is a joke. These buffs should be part of the abilities themselves, not something you have to activate.

**Shinryu**

Sniper, you are dead on (pardon the pun). Devs seem to jump into a variety of other topics featuring both positive and negative views of the CR... but I haven't seen a dev jump into any of the topics revolving around this issue... and there have been many topics about this issue.

If the devs are so sure about this manual buff thing being the way to go, then I think they should come out and tell us why they feel that way.

>revolt_

I can only say that I have ABSOLUTELY NO problem with haveing to manually activate some buffs. Usually it's only one more mouseclick for me to activate all my buffs I want. Use some /MacroFu and you can even get all the hacker upgrades into one tiny little macro item. It's so easy.

And some upgrades HAVE to be activated manually all the time, because otherwise it would be too unbalanced with multiclassed loadouts.

>revolt_

**Tytanya_MxO**

If it was just some buffs no one would mind, but we have gone from the ridiculous to the sublime, the new system is terribly unweildy and when it comes to real hybrid trees virtually un-useable. it MUST be addressed BEFORE it goes live!

**1sultrybytes**

amen..this is very very sad.

the_sniper

Hey, nice to see the devs decided to join this conversation. Oh wait...No they didn't.

SilentW

Agree wholeheartedly, and make them all permenant. Why does my MA prowess only last 20 seconds, as well as my firearms skill, when my MA initiate buff lasts forever?

cryshal

/agree

the problem seems to be.. imbalance =D clothes arent supposed to help us as much as our ab buffs do. but, our buffs have been nerfed. sort of.

but this probly turns the devs off. i promise its not about nerfing. sort of. its about gameplay. why should i have to hit a key over and over and over to keep upgrade attacks in effect ESPECIALLY CONSIDERING how long it lasts on live? why would anyone only want their dmg buffed for 10 secs or whatever it is now (dont remember but its VERY short)? for those bothersome zerg moments? hahaha.

devs, as i said in another post, cr2 isnt nearly ready to go live. pls pls pls postpone this. a few ppl may cry about it but those are simply the ppl who are restless about the game, having nothing to do but pk as a result of being a 50. for which only SOE is to blame (no live events). push back cr2 at least a couple months and get this tightened up. aim for some (high) % of EVERY issue raised on forum being fixed. all the positive changes that we see so far, we like. but some of the bad things are a deal breaker. the new ab system is fruity. you want the loading/unloading/invoking buffs thing kept to an absolute minimum. this is a game not a model train.. so why do we have to tinker around so much before every fight? =D

**Shinryu**

*tumbleweed rolls by* SMILEY

Nice to see the devs taking this issue seriously...

Codebasher

It'd be nicer if you could actually have two 'upgrades' at once, but it seems, so far, that's not possible.

Turn on soldier upgrade, and martial artist upgrade poofs. etc, etc. Or is there a bug I haven't seen mentioned that upgrades don't actually display when on, if more than one is used?

Codebasher

Hmm, from reading more, I see that upgrades that upgrade the same thing aren't supposed to stack...

But, I'd like to see the 'Soldier Upgrade', which is a pure melee/ballistic resistance upgrade, made able to stack with the other 'profession type' upgrades like Martial Artist Initiate, etc, as those do not buff resistances, that I've noticed.

As it is now, unless you have a whole lot of armored clothing of the top grade, you can't use anything but soldier upgrade if you want to keep your resistances up to where they'll keep you alive.

This would leave you with two 'upgrade' slots, one for soldier (resistances only), and one for 'style' type upgrades that boost attack chances, damage, etc.

HCFrog

Okay... we really haven't been ignoring this. In fact our most heated discussions around the office have been regarding the title buffs.

First let me set up the background of why the title buffs are there:

#1: In the old system, with all the title buff upgrades stacking on each other, it created some balance issues with hybrid trees becoming too powerful, creating an imbalance.

#2: Part of the design of CR2 is that your influences do not apply to passive buffs. They only apply to buffs you activate. So in order to get some good stuff out of, say, your Concentration influence, you have to activate a buff like the Ballista Upgrade.

Now some challenges with having them auto-activatable:

#1: Implementation. We don't have a good way to auto-activate buffs every time you change your tree.

#2: Design challenge: say you're level 49 and you have Vector and Script Kiddie. Which of the two top-level upgrade buffs should get activated?

So all this puts us in an interesting situation. There are those who say the buffs provide some interesting gameplay and make it so that two people with the same loadout won't necessarily have the same stuff going. There are others who think we should strip the buffs out entirely and make the passive buffs from the title abilities a little nicer, even if it puts us back in the same boat as Live where Hybrids (supposedly) gain too much power.

I think we might just have a cage match to decide it. But it has been raised, repeatedly, how much players loathe the current implementation. And... I really can't promise what is going to happen at this point.

One question, would people be pissed if they were just removed? Perhaps the other buffs improved slightly? Are the title upgrades so much of an annoyance that you'd rather just not have them at all? Because given the design and implementation challenges, auto-activating the upgrades really is not going to happen.

TheTaxidermist

wow,

a dev said 'pissed'

oh and the other stuff yea, I thought everyone knew that already?

**Shadow-SK** · 03/15/2006 13:13:07

I personally don't mind activating these buffs, but it would be nice for it to stay on while traveling through hardlines. If this were to become true, then I really wouldn't care.

To me, there are more important things that should be addressed (like the regular tactics on the hotbar thing). Other than that, I can just throw all the title buffs on a seperate hotbar, activate them once, and be done with it.

Maybe you could simply remove the buffs from the title abilities so we could keep the "Grandmaster" or "Master [name]", and make it passive.

Message Edited by ShadowSK on 03-15-200601:12 PM

Message Edited by ShadowSK on 03-15-200601:13 PM

Khr0n1k

I dont mind activating them, just make them where they stay on when i do things like go through a hardline and it will be all good.